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FTPplanet.com Newsletter - The Year-Ender - 2003
http://www.ftpplanet.com
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In this issue ...
o SITE OF THE YEAR -- Correct Craft Fan by Keith
o TIP OF THE YEAR -- Webmasters vs. Spammers: A Guestbook Story
o POSTERS OF THE YEAR -- Congratulations to these frequent posters
o CONTEST -- Last chance to win an FTPplanet.com t-shirt
o SURVEY  - "...holiday shopping was done online?"
o NEWSLETTER INFO -- Archives, subscribe/unsubscribe, feedback

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SITE OF THE YEAR

It wasn't easy coming up with the one Web site we would designate as
'Site of the Year' for 2003. The staff at FTPplanet sat down and took a
good, long look at each of the sites that have been awarded 'Site of the
Week' in 2003 and, after much arguing, we've come up with our winner.

But before we present a write-up from the 'Site of the Year' winner,
we would like to present the honorable mentions:

Honorable Mention #1: bear's Home Page:
http://home.earthlink.net/~bearbro/

Honorable Mention #2: Fragile X by wpatters1229:
http://www.fragilex.org/

Without any additional stalling, the winner of FTPplanet's 'Site of the
Year' for 2003 is Correct Craft Fan:
http://www.correctcraftfan.com/

Keith says:

"CorrectCraftFan.com is a Web site for enthusiasts of Correct Craft
waterski boats of all models and years. Without WS_FTP Pro, I could
not have created this site.

CorrectCraftFan.com features a Diaries section where people can
post pictures and stories of their Correct Craft boats. I use WS_FTP
Pro to download the images from the live server, edit them with
Photoshop, and then upload them back -- all without leaving WS_FTP.

The reference section of CorrectCraftFan.com features original
Correct Craft brochures form the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s along with
full manuals for different engines and transmissions. Some of these
files are over 10 MB but I've had no problem uploading them using
WS_FTP Pro.

Thanks FTPplanet.com for WS_FTP and for the honor of Site of the
Year."

See all of the 'Site of the Week' award winners:
http://www.ftpplanet.com/websites

Post your Web site for a chance to be an FTPplanet 'Site of the Week':
http://www.ftpplanet.com/cgi/ubb/Ultimate.cgi

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TIP OF THE YEAR

One of our favorite tips this year was submitted by harshfie back in
September, which generated some great responses in our forums. The
whole thread is a bit long for the newsletter, but here is harshfie's
original tip with a link to the thread:

"Here is an idea for people maintaining a website with spam problems:
I've been maintaining a website for my church, and I've recently been
dismayed to find the guestbook filled with spam, ads, and quite
disgusting trash (I don't need to be specific; I'm sure you've seen this
stuff in your email). I had gone to quite a lot of trouble to learn perl for
the guestbook, so I wasn't easily convinced to discard the guestbook
concept. The guestbook does garner really valid and useful comments
at times.

I first tried a few ideas like suppressing the ability for a guestbook
writer to add his website URL. These ideas didn't work. Finally I moved
the page by copying the file from, for example, GUEST.HTM to
GUESTX.HTM. I changed all the pointers on the other pages to
GUESTX.HTM. Nevertheless, I found that the old guestbook was
still receiving spam. New and valid comments continued on the
new page.

This made me realize that the spammers were coming to my
guestbook directly, without using my hyperlinks. They were not
just finding the guestbook in the normal way. It caused me to
attempt to put myself into the mind of such spammers. I realized
that if I wanted to do such an unkind thing, I would use a search
engines and to find the guestbooks. Tada!

I have now attempted to avoid letting search engines find my
guestbook by using the features of a file entitled ROBOTS.TXT.
I include this file on my website to discourage search engines
from listing my guestbook. True visitors to my site, however, can
find the guestbook easily.

Here is what I use in ROBOTS.TXT.  Perhaps you can use the
concept to help your sites too. I actually used lower case for the
filename, but upper case in this narrative to make it stand out.

User-Agent: *
Disallow: /guest/
Disallow: /*.log

Read the whole thread on FTPplanet:
http://www.ftpplanet.com/ubb/Forum8/HTML/000240.html

Post your tip in the 'FTP Tips' forum for a chance to win:
http://www.ftpplanet.com/cgi/ubb/Ultimate.cgi

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POSTERS OF THE YEAR

One of the most popular items on FTPplanet.com are our discussion forums
and they wouldn't be the same without posts from you, the FTPplanet.com
community. Among you, there are five top posters who deserve a big round
of applause and an Amazon.com gift certificate!

The top five posters are:
o Maxim Valmont (53 posts) wins a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate!
o stanfam (101 posts) wins a $50 Amazon.com gift certificate!
o bear (172 posts) wins a $50 Amazon.com gift certificate!

...and in a tie for the top poster position as of the writing of this
newsletter:

o MrUser (676 posts) wins a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate!
o pdbeugeling (676 posts) wins a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate!

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CONTEST

Here it is....your last chance to win an FTPplanet t-shirt. They're almost
gone (we just have some medium size t-shirts left).

All you need to do to win is a post a review in our Ratings and Review
section: http://www.ftpplanet.com/_listreview/listreview.htm

Pick a product you enjoy using and post a review. That's it. We'll select a
bunch (until we run out of t-shirts) of reviews to feature in the next issue
of the newsletter.

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SURVEY

We're going to keep the current survey up for a little while longer:

"How much of your holiday shopping was done online?"
Take the survey now: http://www.ftpplanet.com/

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